Living with Bipolar Disorder & Mental Illness

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The Crack in the Ice

I feel sick. Nauseous and shaky. It feels like medication withdrawal but it’s not, it’s just anxiety, or possibly the ice cream I shoved mercilessly into my poor lactose intolerant body last night due to… well, anxiety. Fucking Anxiety.

I have been skating on very thin ice emotionally speaking I seem to do well for moments at a time, keep my balance and even pick up speed. But underneath, cracks are forming on this metaphorical pond faster than the crack in my windscreen did when that truck flung a decent sized rock into it on Tuesday.

When that stone hit, right at eye level, I was traveling at 100kmph around the bend of a country road, weirdly, it’s loud bang didn’t even startle me, I just sighed and wished it had been bigger. Big enough to break right through the glass and hit me square in the face, quiet the mind.

The children were in the car at that moment and it was the day Mr11 turned 12, so instead I tried to be grateful, swore not-so-under-my-breath and grumbled about finally having to replace my windscreen; like my metaphorical mind-pond, it too was already full of tiny stone chips that I had been ignoring because they hadn’t quite cracked yet.

Found this, it was taken just before the ice cracked in 2015

But I’m okay. Providing that nobody asks anything from me or talks to me in general and if I am sufficiently distracted from my thoughts by mindless TV shows, I can even forget about my angst for a few hours, just long enough to momentarily consider the possibility that I am well again, maybe this depression lark was just a false alarm. Then suddenly someone or something grabs me by the hair and drags me backwards straight back into the vortex.

Rides not over yet bitch.

Last night I was watching Shameless on netflix, I really like that show and have only recently discovered it, but it can be as confronting as Hell as it covers pretty much all the bad stuff that ever happened to myself and people I know but in a slightly exaggerated manner for theatrical and shock value, it definitely lives up to its name.

So anyway, one of the characters has bipolar and watching the scenes of manic destruction and the fall into depression play out just hit me a little too close to home for my current headspace, I was totally unprepared for the graphic attempted suicide scene that followed – when I watched 13 reasons why, due to the social media hype I knew what to expect from the final episode and was prepared for it.

Being a little late to the Shameless party I didn’t see this coming. It wasn’t so much the graphicness of the scene as the all too realistic reactions of the family and the fact that my husband was watching with me. It took me straight back to my 2015 attempt and I was swamped by the guilt all over again. That coupled with the guilt of still so badly wanting to die, and hubby squeezing my hand in a “painful memory” kind of way. So I lost it, externally I cried, internally another piece of my soul died.

We kept watching and to top it off the pregnant teen mother gave birth to a child with Down Syndrome so the couple that were going to adopt him changed their minds and she point blank refused to have anything to do with the baby. That brought flashbacks of being 18 and giving birth to my second son, knowing there was a problem but not knowing what, the combination of fear and intense love that I didn’t understand because I had been emotionally numb for a year after my first son’s birth, all of son #2’s developmental issues… and then I thought about how well he is doing now, except for psychologically because he knows that his selfish bitch of a mother tried to top herself back in 2015 and it fucked him up. Yet that selfish bitch mother is still a selfish bitch because despite all of that, despite the devastation it brings, she still knows in her heart that they would all be better off without her and she just wants so badly to curl up and die.

Image stolen from Google Images

So, the ice has cracked again and I am treading water just trying to keep my head above the freezing waters, I’m getting too tired to hold on much longer, I need help, I know I do, but I can’t ask because there isn’t time, too much to do, to many promises I have to keep.

3 Comments on “The Crack in the Ice”

All I can tell you, beautiful writer Kate, is that you NEVER have been a selfish bitch,
although I know you really believe that in your gut. I know that because I’ve felt like that for years and sometimes I still feel like that too when I think what I’ve done to my kids. But I’m fine with blaming it on the evil bipolar shit although I feel terrible about the trauma my behavior has caused.

I may not be God or Jesus or any other higher authority – Oprah…the Rock…the Obamas….
John Cena…….you-name-it……..but I know in the very marrow of my bones
you could NEVER, EVER, EVER truly be a selfish bitch!!!!

You are a loving, gorgeous, good mom despite wanting to be gone because you think your children would be better off without you. (Um – you think that…..but it’s WRONG! There is only one YOU and your kids do not want some lame-ass wannabe mom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! )

Sure, you have a couple of flaws, but that’s normal.
Your children love you and that’s all that matters.

Keep swimming, just as you say……but if the dark thoughts overtake you, I beg you to keep yourself safe, and get help no matter what.

Struggling with mental health, I was sat on a psych ward and inspired to start my very own blog! So here we are, welcome to life’s in the eyes of lauren where I’ll be tackling difficult topics and sharing my personal experiences, mainly focusing on mental health but also social services, the care system, living away from my biological family, school struggles and just life in general! i am writing to help poeple, if that means ive helped one person, ive achieved my goal. I hope you enjoy reading, Good Vibes Only xoxo